2nd Amendment for the U.K. -- long overdue

I feel like the pariah here, being from the UK and wanting to own shedloads of real, activated guns. There are two reasons this will not happen:
1) The Law
and
2) The cost.
I'd quite like a whole panoply of weapons from WW1 and WW2 (modern stuff - meh, you can keep it), starting with the .455 Webley revolver and ending up with the PTRD 14.5mm anti-tank rifle, by way of the mighty Vickers gun in WW1 and WW2 versions.
This will never happen! Firstly (or secondly, after my list above) I couldn't afford the tens of thousands of pounds involved. More relevantly, HM Government is not keen on it's citizens having an automatic weapon, let alone dozens of them.

In mitigation, I'd only be shooting at targets, honestly - none of this stuff would be for "home defence" or "self defence", it would be for plain visceral enjoyment in using historical weaponry. And I would need a warehouse to keep all the kit in. Still, a man can dream, eh?
 
Under the 2nd amendment, the requirement for training and qualifications would be an infringement of your god given right to shoot yourself in the foot.
 
There's some pretty serious Brit arsenal on view on BBC News 24 right now....

Rolfe.
 
Kestrel said:
Part of the explanation may lie in the reasons why people own firearms. In the US, a primary reason is self defense. Owning handguns is common and firearms are often kept loaded. Countries where the primary reasons for owning firearms are sport or hunting have lower rates of handgun ownership and lower firearms death rates.
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In Australia, "self-defence" is not considered a valid reason for owning a firearm. I think this is one reason that firearms aren't that widespread here - only the people who have a "valid reason" for owning one can get a license.
 
UNLoVedRebel said:
Much like oral hygiene, the Brits haven't got a clue about gun rights. After that crazy taxi cab mother ****er shot a bunch of unarmed civilians, it's about time the U.K. thought about adopting its own 2nd Amendment-type gun rights legislation. How many more people have to die before the Brits start carrying guns?
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Don't be so daft.
 
The Painter said:
Germany???

The Brits aren't man enough to own guns. That's why they are not allowed to have them. They would piss their pants with a gun in the house.
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Lol,and totally wrong.Don't you just love sweeping generalizations?
 
Rolfe said:
That analogy alone indicates to me that the primary purpose of this OP is trolling. What does firearms legislation have to do with oral hygiene? Or is there some new add-on for your six-shooter that also removes dental plaque?

Someone else has linked to the statistics, but it's a fact. Oral hygiene in Britain is on average better than in the USA. It's true that most Brits aren't especially interested in cosmetic dentistry, but that has nothing to do with oral hygiene. Teeth that are a bit crooked, or yellow-ish, or slightly chipped, or have amalgam fillings on the molars, may be and frequently are perfectly healthy. Most people's teeth are like that.

In contrast, what I observe in the USA is that one the one hand we see the artificial, blinding Hollywood smile, with gleaming white, even gnashers of strikingly artificial appearance. That tends to cover the reasonably well-off. Then on the other hand we see the gap-tooth smiles and the gross decay exhibited by most Americans in the less privileged classes.

I've seldom seen that last sort of mouth in Britain. It usually belongs either to a homeless person, or someone with a serious phobia of dentists. And yet it's so common in the USA, when the ordinary Joe is examined rather than the ones that usually appear on TV.

Which is why I conclude that the OP is merely intended to be gratuitously insulting.

Rolfe.
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Well said.How did this myth of British bad teeth start?
 
dafydd said:
Well said.How did this myth of British bad teeth start?
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The USA orthodontics industry. There's huge money to be made by equating well spaced, gleaming white teeth with social success.
 
[sings] and you can't believe a man would lie through such nice teeth..[/sings]
 
Eddie Dane said:
Well, since you put it that way, the Dutch choice of carrying a deadly weapon is probably way too extreme for most situations. In how many cases do they need to use deadly force?

It's actually quite weird that we are having a discussion about the police getting tazers, when the cops are packing a 9mm.

Another thing I like about the UK model: The armed response teams are presumably actually good at what they do.
There are a lot of cases here of cops not getting their practice at the range, fumbling with their firearm etc.

I knew a guy who was in a police "arrestatie team" (specializes in arresting dangerous suspects). these guys spend all their time training. There is simply no comparison to a normal police officer.
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That is true.I was talking to a Belgian police officer recently and he had fired a grand total of 5 rounds in training this year so far.I don't think that I would want him waving a gun around near me.
 
Seismosaurus said:
You know, I don't think many Americans truly understand the difference in attitude towards guns here.

Suppose gun laws were abolished tomorrow in the UK. Many Americans seem to think that Brits would run out and buy guns for home defence, and the situation here would be much as it is there. In fact, this simply wouldn't happen. Most British people don't want guns, they don't LIKE guns. If guns were legal, most people wouldn't have them anyway.

For much of my early life the gun laws were a lot more lax than they are now. Nevertheless, I have never once met a person who owned a gun. If I were a career criminal who specialised in burglary back then, it would never even have occurred to me that a homeowner would have a gun, or that they'd threaten me with it if they did.

Similarly if we adopted US style gun laws tomorrow, I'd imagine very few of what we might term "law abiding citizens" would go out and get one for home defence. The idea simply wouldn't occur to most people.
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True.There is a big culture gap here,and never the twain shall meet.
 
Travis said:
The idea of unarmed police is so foreign to me. My stepdad was CHP for 30 years and he would have been dead many times if not for being armed. One time he was walking up to a car he pulled over for littering and the guy just opened up on him with a .45. He took two bullets in the shoulder returned fire and killed the guy. They never did figure out why the guy started shooting at him.
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Wouldn't have happened in Britain,hence the above-mentioned culture gap.
 
dafydd said:
Wouldn't have happened in Britain,hence the above-mentioned culture gap.
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Well, not unless you pick a day when tensions are high, surveillance is poor and you happen to be an innocent Brazilian electrician.
 
uk_dave said:
Well, not unless you pick a day when tensions are high, surveillance is poor and you happen to be an innocent Brazilian electrician.
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Or you happen to be a violent Scot with an accent some people mistake for Irish, a history of illegal weapons possession, a conviction for armed robbery and a table leg in a plastic bag.
 
brodski said:
Or you happen to be a violent Scot with an accent some people mistake for Irish, a history of illegal weapons possession, a conviction for armed robbery and a table leg in a plastic bag.
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Links to that part of the story, please?

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
Links to that part of the story, please?

Rolfe.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Stanley

He served four years in jail after being convicted of grievous bodily harm with intent in December 1993. His spent convictions include several jail terms for robbery and possession of drugs and a conviction for armed robbery in 1974.[1] The 46-year-old painter and decorator had only recently been released from hospital after an operation for colon cancer at the time of his death.
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On 22 September 1999, he was returning home from the Alexandra Pub in South Hackney carrying, in a plastic bag, a table leg that had been repaired by his brother earlier that day. Someone had phoned the police to report "an Irishman with a gun wrapped in a bag".[2]
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I believe that the Daily Telegraph kept trying to highlight it, but am unaware that it was ever meaningfully investigated and hence I always assumed it to be an attempt to muddy the waters/help the police avoid a well-justified prosecution of their own officers.

ETA: Something peculiar seems to have happened at the inquest:

http://news.scotsman.com/harrystanley/Shooting-inquest-hears-of-victims.2337094.jp

And if you want a rather partisan rendering of it all, take a look at this:

http://pfoa.co.uk/54/stanley-case

Double the drink-drive limit. That's three pints. Hardly drunk, eh? And you'll note that at no point is concerned expressed for Harry, it's all about the officers. Apparently they were stressed out by all the evidence suggesting they'd gunned an unarmed man down. Bummer, eh?
 
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brodski said:
Or you happen to be a violent Scot with an accent some people mistake for Irish, a history of illegal weapons possession, a conviction for armed robbery and a table leg in a plastic bag.
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But they can't have simultaneously thought he was an Irish terrorist and known that he was really a former (soon to be late) armed robber from Glasgow.
 
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